Explanatory Blog Post #2

Why Civil Resistance Works: The strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict

                It is almost always the case that when one hears the term “revolution” they assume that the revolution was an all-out war against the government; an event where many people died for a good cause so on and so forth. While these things do happen in some revolutions, the revolutions that are seen as being more effective are the passive aggressive ones.

                In the reading by Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth “Why Civil Resistance works: The strategic Logic of Nonviolent conflict”, they explain a study that they conducted where they explore the strategic effectiveness of both violent and nonviolent campaigns in conflict between nonstate and state actors using data from major violent and nonviolent campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They break the reading down into three sections: the first shows their main argument; the second shows their data set and their preliminary empirical findings and the third is their evaluation on three case studies: East Timor, the Philippines and Burma.

                Starting from the first section, we can see that their main argument is that “Nonviolent resistance may have a strategic advantage over violent resistance”.  They base this argument on two things: the first, repressing nonviolent campaigns may backfire and the second, that nonviolent resistance campaigns appear to be more open to negotiation and bargaining as they tend to not threaten the lives or well-being of members of the target regime. Stephan and Chenoweth define backfire as being when “an unjust act – often violent repression – recoils against its originators, often resulting in the breakdown of obedience among regime supporters”. This then leads to power shifts, conflict between the opponent’s supporters, increasing support (both domestic and international) for the resistance and decreasing support for the campaign. Another argument that they express is that while backfire against violent campaigns are rarer, nonviolent campaigns are more likely to gain long-term benefits from regime repressions than violent campaigns despite any setbacks they may face.

                The second section of the reading states their hypotheses, how they conducted the study as well as their empirical findings. They have four hypotheses each portraying a different dynamic.

1.       The willingness of the regime to use violence will increase the likelihood for success among nonviolent campaigns, but disadvantage violent campaigns.

2.       Nonviolent resistance has a relative advantage over violent resistance in producing loyalty shifts within security forces

3.       International sanctions and overt state support for campaign will advantage nonviolent campaigns over violent campaigns

4.       External state support for the largest regime will disadvantage both violent and nonviolent campaigns

                They found that their first two hypotheses were correct so long as, for the first hypothesis, the regime violence on the campaign did not have any statistical effect on their outcome.  While neither campaign benefit from repression, nonviolent campaigns are more likely to succeed in repression than violent campaigns.  The second hypothesis holds true as they showed that due to security fore defections, nonviolent  campaigns are 46 times more likely to succeed than nonviolent campaigns where defections don’t happen. The second two hypotheses however, showed either little or no truth at all. Hypothesis 3 received the former as external support for a campaign showed no effect on the success of nonviolent campaigns. Hypothesis 4 showed no truth; direct aid to a target regime did not disadvantage nonviolent or violent campaigns.

                In short, the findings showed that nonviolent campaigns were more like to succeed when it comes to repression whereas violent campaigns did not. Nonviolent campaigns benefitted more from domestic pressures were violent campaigns benefitted more from external pressures.

                The third section used three case studies (East Timor, the Philippines and Burma) as a comparative method. Firstly, to show that case selection for theory testing can avoid selection bias as both campaign success and failure can be compared. Secondly, the case studies provide options to improve theoretical models so long as observations of failed campaigns are in need of more explanation.

                East Timor and the Philippines both show that while there was resistance against the campaign at the time, it wasn’t until there was a catalyst (In East Timor, the massacre of the protesters in 1991; in the Philippines, the assassination of Benigo Aquino in 1983) that set of a series of nonviolent demonstrations both resistances being supported by the Catholic Church. These demonstrations led to loyalty shifts and defections which worked in favour for the resistance.

                The case of Burma is different from the other two as the nonviolent resistance by student protests in 1962 were a failure. There were many violent conflicts between students and security forces which in turn, led to a ban on gatherings. After the nationwide strike in 1988, the Burmese Social Program Party allowed for elections but refused to acknowledge the win by Aung San Suu Kyi of the NLD Party and placed her under house arrest. Due to the inability of opposition leaders to work together after Suu Kyi’s arrest, it prevented loyalty shifts from happening.

                All in all, nonviolent resistance campaigns that manage to invoke loyalty shifts in security forces and civilian bureaucrats are more likely to succeed than violent resistances and the case studies show that both violent and nonviolent resistances are unlikely to induce defection or international sanctions.

So to finish it off:

If nonviolent resistance campaigns are more likely to work than violent resistance campaigns, why do we see more violent resistances than nonviolent? Also, in the East Timor and Philippines case studies, both resistance campaigns were supported by the Catholic Church; is it right to criticize it when religion comes into politics if it’s for the good of the people?